Route as traced via Google Maps.

Audio excerpts from the entire letter (mp3 format) Voiceover by Nancy Burnett (burnetnc@oneonta.edu), Communication Arts Department, SUNY College at Oneonta.

1851 Letter from Harvey Seaman to parents in Delancey, Delaware County, NY describing a trip by sail from NY to California via Cape Horn. Excerpts from page 2:

"Now through the great city of York, it's harbour and lovely scenery, was growing more dim and more distant, till it's tallest spires were lost to our view, and fully concived that we were leaving friends behind, perhaps that we should see again...

"But evy calm has its Storm and and evy drop of joy has its tear of woe, and so it was with us, for ere our Boat had left, or our Ship well nigh cleared the land, we began to feel that dull, dizzy, nauseous sickness, belonging to new voyagers...it was really amusing to see thirty or forty heads over the water playing the part of Jonah and the Whale and feeding the fishes with their latest dinner...

"Stretch my eye where I would, I say nothing but great fields of water bounded by the Blue heavens, it reminded me of some (continued on p 3)